An Introduction to a Biology 



as compared with the other animals. He would 

 compete with the beasts of prey not by superior 

 strength but to a certain extent by superior cun- 

 ning ; to a greater extent by his armoury of detach- 

 able weapons and implements, and perhaps still 

 more by this new faculty of looking forward — of 

 pro-vision, in fact. The forward extension of his 

 intellectual vision would probably be accompanied 

 by backward extension of it. It may even be that 

 this forward extension of the intellectual vision 

 necessarily involves a corresponding backward ex- 

 tension of it, as a man cannot walk away from a 

 mirror without his image walking away from it in 

 the opposite direction. At any rate, without such 

 an extension of the intellectual vision backwards the 

 forward extension of it would not be of much use. 

 With it man would begin to provide for the future 

 on the basis of the remembered experience of the 

 past. The domestication of animals, started by 

 accident, continued out of curiosity, and systematised 

 for profit, would stimulate and be stimulated by 

 this faculty of looking forward. So, at a later stage? 

 would the tilling of the soil. It was this long range, 

 therefore, of the intellectual vision of man as com- 

 pared with that of the other animals, which, although 

 at first the result of need, contributed, along with 

 its source, the use of tools, more than anything else 

 did to make its possessor the lord of creation. The 

 way in which the meaning of the word " pro-vision " 

 has been caught up, like that of the word " cure," 

 in the outward current, and swept from its original 

 subjective moorings in the mind, so that it means 

 no longer an intention, nor the acting upon that 



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